


even when i close my eyes

by VeloxVoid



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bonding, Cuddling & Snuggling, Denial of Feelings, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentioned Glenn Fraldarius, Nightmares, Sharing a Bed, Sleeping Together, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:21:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28298883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeloxVoid/pseuds/VeloxVoid
Summary: Felix knows there is only one thing that comforts Dimitri through his nightmares. The last time they cuddled to fall asleep was after the Tragedy of Duscur; now, they are older, filled with their own emotional baggage, and sharing a bed is a little more awkward than they remembered.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33





	even when i close my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [Kay](https://twitter.com/kayisdreaming) for beta-reading this for me! :)

* * *

_I woke up in a dream today_

_To the cold of the static and put my cold feet on the floor_

_Forgot all about yesterday_

_Remembering I'm pretending to be where I'm not anymore_

_A little taste of hypocrisy_

_And I'm left in the wake of the mistake, slow to react_

_And even though you’re so close to me_

_You’re still so distant and I can’t bring you back_

* * *

**Felix**

Moonlight pooled in a silvery puddle at the foot of Felix’s bed, seeping in through his dorm’s unshuttered window. The moon was full tonight — hanging low and plump in the sky like a raincloud, swollen and glowing its eerie pale light.

Felix rolled over in his bed to face the wall, forcing his eyes closed. He needed sleep. Tomorrow, he would train — he would need to have all his energy and wits about him if he hoped to beat that blasted new Professor — and for that, he needed rest.

No matter how hard he tried, however, the sweet embrace of slumber would not pull him under. Instead, his mind whirred, taunting him with his failures and his incompetence and his inadequacies. He would never beat Professor Eisner — would never be as good as Glenn, or good enough to take after his father as Duke Fraldarius.

If only he could train with Glenn. His brother’s techniques had always been familiar to him; they were comforting and made wielding a sword feel like second nature. The steps he would take to evade were more of a dance: a dance he and Glenn would take together, with flowing footwork and arm movements more graceful than violent.

Alas, Glenn was gone, and Felix was alone. Sometimes at night he could still smell his brother's scent; the soft mustiness of his hair masked beneath the faded floral shampoo, the faint sweat under the soap of his clothes. It was a ghost-scent, Felix knew, but still it filled him with longing.

Felix pulled the covers up over his head in an attempt to block out the moon. Its light forced itself under his eyelids —he told himself that was why he couldn't sleep — but deep down he knew the thoughts circling his mind, insidious, were the cause.

He had almost resigned himself to a night of restlessness, a moment away from tumbling out of bed to sneak into the Training Grounds, when the howl began. The noise started low, thrumming in the pit of his stomach like the low, warning growl of a feral dog.

 _Not again,_ Felix thought.

From there, the sound rose. It grew higher and louder, interrupted by the occasional grunt of panic. And then it would resume. Howling, rising, until it spread throughout Felix's veins with fingers of ice. Screams, ringing like furious bells. Knocking around his brain like marbles being dropped upon a stone floor.

Felix sighed. These howls had been haunting him ever since he’d arrived at Garreg Mach, drifting into his room and his dreams and his thoughts through the wall to the left.

Dimitri was having another nightmare.

The first night, it had been almost frightening to hear. It wasn’t so much the anguish buried beneath the struggling screams — the utter despair and fright and the muffled pleas for mercy as he pried himself from his terrors — but it was the fact that they still happened. They hadn’t stopped. It had been at least four years since Felix had heard them last, but they hadn’t relented in that time.

If anything, they’d gotten worse.

This was Felix's eleventh night at Garreg Mach, and the eleventh night in a row he'd heard the screams. By the third day, they’d irritated him; they ground on his nerves and made him grit his teeth, burying his head beneath his pillow to drown them out. By the ninth day, he’d gotten used to it. They roused him from his fitful sleeps, but once he realised what they were, he’d been able to drift off again, regarding them as a sort of twisted, macabre lullaby.

Now, however, he wanted rid of them.

Before he could stop himself, Felix had leapt from his bed, his feet hitting the chilly stone below and drawing goosebumps to his skin. He didn’t care; still in his pyjamas, he crossed the room, pulled open the door, and let it slam behind him. Before he knew it, he had reached Dimitri’s room and was shoving the door open, feeling the breeze riffle through his loose hair.

 _“Boar!”_ he hissed as the door closed behind him.

* * *

**Dimitri**

He was back in Duscur.

The country was supposed to be welcoming to him. It was where Dedue was from — a place, he'd been told, that was filled with beauty and respite and wonderful people.

Now that Dimitri was back there, however, it was dying. The grass extended before him for miles, a blanket of emerald green, kissed amber by the sky's setting sun. Yet as he walked, that grass crunched beneath his feet, withering and blackening and tumbling away on the breeze.

"No," Dimitri whispered, looking down at the destruction he'd caused. His hands began to shake. The grass behind him had all turned to ash, and the sky began to darken with it. Now, the horizon was touched by that amber glaze not from the setting sun, but from fire.

It was Dedue's village under there.

Dimitri set off at a run, as fast as his aching muscles would allow. He flew over the crunching, crumbling grass, his mind spiralling, panicked thoughts pecking at his brain like a wake of ravenous vultures. Snapping at him, hurting him.

He continued to run. In that village was his father, was Glenn, was Dedue. He couldn't let them die — not this time. As his feet pounded against the ground, however, stirring up the ashy grass, he felt himself beginning to sink. He felt the ground collapse beneath him, and turned around to see it blowing away on the winds, leaving nothing but a gaping chasm in its wake.

It was catching up to him. At this rate, the abyss would swallow him whole before he got to reach the village. Dimitri could do nothing but continue to run, helplessly reaching forwards for a helping hand that was not there, until he felt the ground give way beneath his boots.

He screamed then, hearing it echo uselessly against the endless walls of the chasm. He was weightless, plummeting downwards while screaming, begging for help, for a saviour.

Whispers came back at his ears from bodiless voices.

"This is what you deserve."

"This is where we are now.”

“Trapped forever, thanks to you."

And as Dimitri fell into the bottomless pit that would deliver him to Sothis, a milky-white figure appeared next to him.

His father. Face slightly lined by age, but warm and welcoming nonetheless. He melted into view, hair whipping behind him as he too fell with Dimitri.

"It has been so long," he said. His voice wasn't the same, though. It was a sad voice, weepy, throat sounding raw. "I've been falling for so long."

"I'm sorry, Father," muttered Dimitri through rising tears. "I didn't mean for it to happen."

"You did," King Lambert said, sorrowful voice twisting into something nasty — something bitter. "You killed us, Dimitri. You know that."

Countless other voices joined him, a moribund chorus. "You did, Dimitri. You know that."

 _Not more._ Dimitri grit his teeth, hoping desperately to shut them out. He strained too hard, however; his teeth all crumbled, turning black as charcoal and splintering beneath the power of his jaw. Through more of the blackened dust that haunted his dreams, he spat a word.

_"No!"_

But the voice of King Lambert didn't relent. _“Boar!”_

Dimitri begged him as the tears rolled from his eyes, leaving trails of blisteringly hot wax to puddle at his eyelids. “I’m not a boar, Father, I promise—!”

_“Boar!”_

No… That wasn’t the voice of his father. Dimitri cocked his head as the face before him began to morph, bubbling like curdling cream over a stove until eventually the skin melted away. Beneath it was a different face — somebody else’s.

“Don’t go,” Dimitri wept, reaching out pathetic hands as his father’s spectral figure shifted. “Don’t leave me, Father, don’t—”

_“Dimitri!”_

His eyes snapped open.

To his surprise, he was not met tonight with the ceiling of his dormitory in Garreg Mach. Nor was he face down in the pillows, gasping for breath.

Once his eyes opened and focussed, they found the face of Felix Hugo Fraldarius staring back at him.

All he could do was blink, dumbfounded, as Felix pulled back and stood over him. He looked angry — pissed off; his default expression these days.

“Nice of you to join me,” Felix grunted down at him.

“Why… are you here?” Dimitri managed in return. He whipped his head around; no chasm. No melting Father. None of that hideous, awful ash. He was safe.

“It’s lovely to see you too.”

Dimitri sat up against his bed frame, flicking his hair out of his eyes.

“You were screaming,” Felix said plainly. “You do it every night.”

That made Dimitri’s eyes widen — made his lips tight and his cheeks hot. “I… do?”

“It’s rather distracting. People are trying to sleep, you know.”

“I know,” Dimitri muttered. He felt a heat wash over him, prickling his skin as beads of sweat rose to the surface. How utterly _embarrassing._ “When you say… ‘screaming’...”

“I mean screaming.” Felix folded his arms, looking down at him through a furrowed brow. “Like a banshee. Or like you've seen one."

“Screaming… like I used to?”

The words seemed to strike Felix as heavily as they did Dimitri; as soon as they left his mouth, he regretted it. A pain spread throughout his chest — an empty, longing pang. It took him back to those four years ago, back when his heart would constrict with yearning, rendering him a sobbing, speechless mess every time he felt the absence of his father.

Felix’s eyes widened. Evidently, he remembered the way Dimitri used to scream in the night too. “Yes,” he said, voice dry in his throat. “Just like you used to.”

A moment of silence reigned too long as the men looked at each other. Felix’s bitter irritation had turned to worry; to a wide-eyed, concerned sort of sternness. Dimitri knew that look: folded arms, set jaw, and cold, unwavering eyes.

It was the look he used to shoot Dimitri after that battle in western Faerghus. After the rebellion. After Dimitri had lost a part of himself in the battle, earning him the nickname of ‘Boar’. Back in Fhirdiad, when Dimitri had made a speech congratulating the battle’s surviving soldiers, Felix had been giving him this look. It hid a thousand sentiments, but the strongest was etched into those disquieted features clear as day. “Really, Boar?” it said. “What is _wrong_ with you? Who _are_ you?”

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he managed through his tightened throat.

Felix rolled his eyes and sat down on Dimitri’s bed. Well, his legs; Dimitri moved them out of the way upon feeling Felix’s weight. “I wasn’t asleep.”

“You weren’t?”

“No.”

 _Ah._ Dimitri looked down at his hands, playing anxiously with his fingers. Felix was silent, regarding him with those eyes. Those awful, judgmental eyes.

After what felt like a minute of the silence, Dimitri cleared his throat awkwardly. “You, uh… You can go back to bed if you want. I’m fine—”

“Shut up.”

It was not a request, nor a suggestion. It was a demand. Felix pointed one lithe finger at Dimitri’s face, his own expression thunderous.

“I’m sorry—!”

“Shut _up._ Sothis. What _happened_ to you?” Felix shook his head, and for the first time, Dimitri noticed that his hair was loose. He hadn’t seen him with loose hair since the day his father and Glenn had died. It was nice. His tresses fell over his shoulders and into his eyes with a slight wave, the midnight blue glinting white beneath the moon.

What _had_ happened to Dimitri?

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “What _has_ happened to me?”

“Every Goddess-forsaken night since we got here, you’ve screamed in the night. _Eleven_ nights, Boar."

That much was true; he had nightmares every night. They would wake him up, and he would find himself bolt-upright, hands outstretched as if to fend off some imaginary attacker, or on the floor, writhing in the sheets that entangled him. He didn’t realise, however, that he screamed during them.

It made sense, he supposed. He had screamed during the nightmares occasionally as a child, after the Battle of Duscur. And ever since he’d arrived at the monastery, they had gotten much, much worse.

“I thought a change of pace would make things better,” Dimitri admitted, his voice sounding young and lost within the echoing chambers of his dorm. “I thought coming here to Garreg Mach would make them stop. Would distract me, let me get on with a new life. But…" And he looked helplessly to Felix. "They're getting worse."

Felix was quiet for a long moment, his stare boring into Dimitri’s eyes. When at last he spoke, he did so with a heavy shrug. “Sometimes change is the thing that disturbs us the most.”

Dimitri felt his eyebrows waver. Above everything else, he’d been most excited about moving to the monastery for the fact it meant _change_. It meant new scenery — a new life. Long gone were the barren, lonely halls of the Faerghan Palace that seemed to howl hauntingly to him in the wind, stalked by the spirits of those he’d lost. No, the Officer’s Academy meant freshness: faces he’d never seen before, and corridors bustling with youth and life. Daily tasks to distract him from his past and his future, and a new goal to work towards.

He had been wrong. Now, in this unfamiliar space, he felt more on-edge than ever. As though his ghosts were always right behind him, just out of sight and out of reach. They watched him train, spied over his shoulders as he wrote notes in class, and filled his dormitory with their ghastly spectral stench at night, filling his mind until he woke, desperate to shake them away.

“Why?” he asked quietly. “I came here thinking it would be a distraction. Why do they still haunt me?”

Felix crossed his legs under him, turning on the bed to face Dimitri. “It’s not even been two weeks. You can’t expect everything to change all at once.”

When Dimitri didn't respond, simply looking at him with eyes that welled with tears, Felix continued. He didn't look happy about it.

“Think of it like pulling up a rug. Yeah, you get to see all the brand new, clear space on the floor underneath, but you also stir up a huge cloud of dust. You’ve upended your life to come here, to make a new one. You’ve got so much going on, of course it’s going to unsettle all the old memories you worked so hard to bury.”

Dimitri thought long and hard; it made sense. The drastic change of his father’s absence all those years ago had dredged up all the old memories he’d had of him, like disturbing sediment from beneath a riverbed. Or moving a rug and disturbing all the settled dust. “That’s... strangely wise,” he said, blinking at Felix. “It sounds like something Dedue might say.”

“Yeah, well, I speak from experience,” Felix murmured in return, brow knitting.

That made Dimitri’s eyes widen. “You… feel it too?”

Felix’s lips were pursed, his eyes fixed on the wall beside him. “I can’t stop thinking about all the shit I have to live up to. Glenn, my father, my own Goddess-forsaken standards.”

Dimitri had never heard him be so upfront. It was startling.

“Coming here was meant to be away from my blasted father, but it’s just reminded me of all the stuff I need to do. Of all the stuff I _should_ be doing. It’s… made sleeping hard,” he admitted.

Dimitri’s lips parted. He had so much he wanted to say: sympathy to give, advice to offer. It would all be lost on Felix. The man didn't appreciate empty sentiments — nor did he ever want his own pain to be acknowledged. Thus, Dimitri kept quiet. He pressed his lips together again and nodded.

Felix’s amber eyes examined the Prince’s for a moment before they flickered downwards. They settled on Dimitri’s chest for only a second before being pulled away. It was enough, though; Dimitri became conscious of his chest being bare — exposed to the chilly air of his dormitory, and to Felix’s wandering eyes. He felt heat rise to his cheeks at once, and pulled his bed covers up to his collarbones to cover himself.

“U-um..."

Felix cleared his throat, wiping his nose with the back of his hand, eyes on the opposite wall. "Wh-what?"

"Nothing! Nothing…" Silence reigned, and Dimitri felt Felix’s gaze flicker back to him a couple of times. "You… _can_ go back to your own room, if you want."

"Will you be able to sleep?" Felix muttered in response.

"I mean… Probably not." He had no reason to lie. "I usually can't go back to sleep after the nightmares."

Felix nodded. "I don't think I'll be sleeping again either."

Dimitri continued to look at him, at the man sitting cross-legged at the end of his bed. Felix looked… small. He had never been the tallest, or most muscular — he had grown positively skinny after the death of Glenn — but now he looked even smaller than usual. Shoulders hunched, hair hanging in his face, the moonlight drowning the angles of his face in shadow.

He looked just how he used to, as a child. And Dimitri felt a feeling surge within him — the same one he used to feel, upon seeing Felix like that.

When he spoke up, he did so without intending. "Do you remember what we used to do, after we had the nightmares?"

* * *

  
  


**Felix**

_Are you out of your mind?_ one half of him wanted to snarl. He suppressed it, though. Instead of hissing and spitting, as he would have done a few days ago, Felix regarded Dimitri carefully.

He looked sad. Alone. No different from how he had four years ago, sitting lost in the middle of his four-poster in the Holy Kingdom's palace. Just a weak little boy wracked by nightmares, shaking and snivelling and wanting his father. Wanting some comfort.

Wanting, for once in his now-lonely life, just to be loved.

Yes, instead of hissing and spitting, Felix crawled delicately across Dimitri’s bed until he reached the pillow. As if by instinct, he found his way beneath the sheets like a stray cat would beneath a newspaper, his skin suddenly craving the heat of another person.

Not just another person, but Dimitri. Dimitri’s warmth had always been different; different from the uncomfortable, wriggling heat of Sylvain and the caustic burn of Ingrid — different even from his father, whose skin had turned to stone after Glenn's death. Dimitri’s warmth was comfort. It was soft and slow, and came in waves that always managed to pull Felix into a slumber.

Dimitri seemed to be running on instinct as well. He shuffled closer to the wall and opened up the bedsheets, making room for Felix’s body. And as Felix shuffled down beside him, pressing himself in close to Dimitri’s body, his heart seemed to slow.

This was how they’d fallen asleep for weeks on end in the aftermath of Duscur. This had been the only saving grace to the nights for the both of them — the only thing that kept the nightmares at bay, and that brought them solace. That was, before guilt and embarrassment and the dark brooding cloud inside of Felix had manifested, pushing him away.

It had been so long since they’d laid like this. And it felt so, _so_ fucking good. Felix rested his head against the soft muscle of Dimitri’s shoulder, a hand slipped across his bare chest. And Dimitri wrapped a leg around Felix’s own, the arm beneath him curling to entangle his fingers in Felix’s hair.

Once settled, they both exhaled a sigh. This was _right._

A rumble began in Dimitri’s chest, spilling softly out of his lips. “Thank you, Felix—”

“Shut _up_ , Boar.”

Felix meant that last word wholeheartedly. Because, throughout it all, Dimitri truly was a boar. Felix had seen what the other man had become on the battlefield, and he had never forgotten it. He knew that the Duscur had changed Dimitri, had brought a darkness to that previously gentle little heart of his.

Perhaps Felix could soften that grizzled, war-hardened interior he knew Dimitri had buried deep. Perhaps, if they continued to lie like this each night, as they had in their childhood, Felix could melt Dimitri’s Faerghan, ice-encrusted heart. And perhaps, if they could fall asleep each night with the warmth of each other’s bodies, their nightmares would not come so easily.

Now, with his head upon Dimitri’s shoulder, his skin burning against Felix’s neck, the moonlight did not look so eerie. Now, its presence was not ominous, like the baleful eyes of his father, reproachful and concerned; now, its soft glow lulled Felix down under.

His last thought before sleep took him was that somehow, this time was different. Being nestled into the crook of Dimitri’s arm was a familiar feeling, but now, it was somehow changed. The happiness blossoming in Felix’s chest did not come from familial love — from the comfort of a friend in the dark times. It was more than that. How, exactly? He wasn’t quite sure. But the butterflies that tickled his stomach as he drifted off told him it was in a good way.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I could easily do some more of this, if it is something anybody would be interested in? Feel free to let me know if I should keep it going!


End file.
